Worn Out Faces
by Somnacin
Summary: A certain archangel is walking around inside Dean Winchester, much to the chagrin of his closest friends. Season 5 AU  ** title change from Nonci Chis Murifri l Gil
1. Chapter 1

**Supernatural** and its associated characters belong to **Eric Kripke** (lucky duck!)

_Author's Note_: **So I've been playing with the idea for this fic for a while and after I spent a few long afternoons puzzling things out with my beta and e-twin, **_QuettaRaiths_**_, _I completed this first chapter...which I give now to you. Enjoy.**

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Castiel is not there to see it, and in this above all things he finds shame.

He's not there when Dean gasps out a _yes_ as cancer eats at his belly and blood dribbles down his chin onto Sam's blue cheek, desperate to save his brother and end the agony. He's not there when Zachariah places a hand on Dean Winchester's forehead, spreading his stone-coloured wings with no regard for Sam's wide, dying eyes. He's not there when Michael rockets into the mortal plane, heat lightning and blindness crackling in his wake as he responds to his brother's victorious call. He doesn't hear Dean's choked scream as the archangel slams into him with all the mercy and gentility of a freight train, too eager to claim his vessel to waste time with formalities. He doesn't taste the desperation as Dean fights the Warrior of God for custody of his most prized possession, nor see the moment when his soul is thrust away from its windows on the world and the body becomes Michael.

No, Castiel arrives to see all that is left of Dean Winchester fall to his knees as Michael shifts under flesh and blood and bone and leaves no room for the tiny human soul... he can hear its cries in the depths of his grace, raw and frightened and _PleaseGodno_. And he drops with a hollow thud and all of Heaven tickles the edges of his consciousness, holding its breath and waiting for Michael while Castiel weeps (silently) for Sam and Dean and suffering yet to come.

Light begins a slow burn through his eyelids, lush pinks and oranges, as Michael unfurls his wings for the first time and Zachariah joins Castiel on the floor and the smaller angel chokes on the bitter smell of blood. His shoulderblades ache where his wings press into the skin, Jimmy's body recalling with perfect and unwanted clarity the pain of its first time; it will be worse for Dean, much worse, since God gave Michael such beautiful wings...he looks up through his eyelashes and sees the great span, the feathers all the prettiest shade of dove-grey and stretching out behind tight shoulders and carefully crafted torso. And he falls in love for the first time (but he doesn't realize it then), gets to his feet and walks past--or maybe through-- Zachariah, places a hand over Dean's bicep and feels it slide perfectly into place over his mark. Michael takes note of his presence for the first time and slowly folds in his wings, tucking the raw power of his essence away behind laughing Winchester eyes.

"Castiel," he murmurs. It is Dean's voice, still, underpinned by the velvet rumble of thunder and fire, and Castiel's ears bleed at the sound. "It has been a long while since we met last, brother."

"Michael." Castiel whispers, pressing his fingertips into the tender flesh of his mark and watching Dean flicker behind the stone mask of an angel's face.

His elder brother smiles a smile that is meant to be warm but breaks oddly on his lips, and kisses him gently and full on the mouth. It is a sweet, chaste moment that tastes of Dean and Castiel and the words they never had time to say; in his moment Castiel learns that heartbreak is not just a human expression. He is shoved to the side by thick, wrinkled hands and the younger Angel likes to think that Michael doesn't kiss Zachariah as sweetly, that Dean's loathing is strong enough to affect Michael's own mannerisms. Because that would mean that he is still present, still fighting... that when this is over and his body has served its purpose, Castiel can ask to have him back.

Sam is revived when Michael finished with Zachariah, his soft eyes (full of hope and worry) sliding in and out of focus... and fall on his brother's body, standing shoulder to shoulder with the angels, his palm full of light, and the hope fizzles out.

"Oh God," he gasps, scrubbing Dean's blood off his cheek and pitching forward like he's trying to regain his balance. Or maybe he's about to be sick' the room is thick with the smell of ozone and steel and even Jimmy's experienced stomach is churning. "Oh no, _Dean_..."

And then Castiel throws up on the floor in front of Michael, and Sam is the one to struggle over and wrap long arms around his shoulders as he gags and chokes under the weight of Dean's extermination. He can taste illness on Sam's breath too and eases out his ebony wings, gets them both as far away as possible as quickly as he can while he spits and bile splatters his shirtfront; Dean's blood is on the walls.

_Castiel!_ Michael's voice echoes in his head, long after he feels the familiar itch of Bobby Singer's scrubby carpet against his knees, throbbing through space and time and bone and muscle and each plane on which the angels exist. _I will come for you, brother. You still have a part to play in this._

The Angel slumps forward onto the floor, feels Sam's hands at his shoulders and the frantic jumble of human voices, and he has never prayed for his Father to sweep him into Oblivion as fervently as he prays in that moment.

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**End o' Chapter One...**

** _Te gusta? No te gusta? Review please! _**


	2. Chapter 2

**Supernatural** and its associated characters belong to **Eric Kripke** (lucky duck!)

_Author's Note_: **If any of you are wondering why I'm posting this second chapter so close to my first one (I know, it's only been a day!), it's because I have been working on this fic longer than I care to admit and have it planned out AT LEAST three chapters in advance. Hope more of you find this and enjoy it.**

**Oh, and the story title was taken from the end of a fic by **_HeavenlyBodies, _**which I cut and pasted into my email signature and recycled for my own purposes. So...recommendation and we're off! Enjoy!**

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Bobby sits in the rough plaid armchair and stares blankly, accusingly at the kitchen floor, where Sam and Castiel unpacked and organized all of Dean's worldly possessions. There isn't much, just some threadbare shirts and his favorite gun and a cashless wallet stuffed with faded pictures and a crayon sketch, and Bobby can't help but wonder...is this it? Is Dean Winchester's life completely summed up in scraps of cloth and paper and steel? He sees the question of the deep lines of an Angel's forehead, in the turn of a little brother's mouth as he fields a call from Jake in Seattle who'd just seen the craziest thing, and maybe it's on him somewhere too

"Knock knock," Ellen murmurs from the doorway, her pale face like a moon in the thick-set shadows around the door. The question curls like smoke around the sockets of her eyes and resounds in the click of Jo's cowboy boots, and they all look at each other with ghost faces and try not to talk anymore.

The ladies busy themselves putting away the groceries (they'd had to get out, do something, and Bobby couldn't blame them for that) and cleaning up his house, tossing empty cans and bottles and food scraps into big black trash bags. It's a double-edged errand; they're checking for secret stories of booze and silver-framed pictures of Dean too, full-well remembering the other months without him. It's been a little over a year, dammit, _not enough time._

"Hey," Jo says delicately, and Bobby sees she's finally circled 'round to Cas, who's playing idly with a dog-eared copy of the Bible. "It's Cas, isn't it? Castiel?"

"Yes." The Angel's reply is soft, heavy, and Bobby can't shake the image of _an angel sprawled on his carpet, wings spread out and bile and tears and Dean's blood covering his shirt _out of his head_._

"Can you help me box these things up, Castiel?" It takes Bobby a moment to realize what things she's referring to, and then Castiel shouts "NO!" in two voices and every glass in the kitchen shatters.

"Hey!" Sam hangs up on Jake and half-sprints towards the Angel, whose face is ashen and whose eyes are glowing like a perfectly lit Bunsen burner, frighteningly blue. "Calm down. Cas, you need to calm down, man."

"Sam Winchester," Castiel whispers and yet his true voice is screaming and Jo gasps as blood drips over her neck. "I don't feel well.

He throws up his dinner--hamburgers and water--on Sam's sock feet while Robert Singer watches the scene unfold from the safety of a rough plaid armchair.

*~*~*~*~*~*

Sam passes the washcloth over Castiel's face, wiping away the sticky mix of his vomit and spit while the Angel looks up at him with the eyes of a child who's never been sick before; apologetic and grateful.

"I'm sorry about your socks."

"It's not a big deal."

"Something is wrong with my vessel."

"Hold still." He covers Cas' mouth with the cloth, because he can't deal with Dean's possession and angelic viruses at the same time. He just can't. "Can you tell me next time you don't feel right?

"I did," Cas says.

"Alright. Just, uh...get to a bathroom if you feel funny." _God, it's like talking to a kid_. "Go to bed, Cas."

He smacks the Angel's shoulder, catching the tip in the palm of his hand to lessen the impact because it's what Dean would have done, what Dean _had _done when Sam was hanging over a toilet all those times in their youth. And he's glad Cas doesn't waste time with an "angels do not require sleep" or a "you do not command me" speech, and he's pissed with Jo standing in the hall watching Cas leave and Bobby who sat statue-still in his chair and didn't keep her _away _from Cas.

"Sam, I--"

"What the hell, Jo?" Sam rinses off the washcloth, nearly snaps the faucet off when he abruptly switches the temperature. Cold is best for getting out blood and vomit stains; better for blood, but his fingers are already red and tender from dealing with hot water (which is better for wiping up somebody's face) and he doesn't want to burn himself any more. "Why would you try to make _him _do it? When _I _can't even...that's Dean's--"

"I'm sorry! I just thought it wouldn't mean as much to _him_." Tears swim in her eyes and voice, and Sam wrings out the cloth with a final sigh, listens to Ellen talking to Cas somehwere in the house and thinks _Dean should be here_.

Dean would've loved to have seen Jo and Ellen again, delighted in the tension between his little brother and surrogate sister, cleaned up Cas' face when he couldn't hold his liquor. He would've had Bobby up and moving, infused with Dean's own restless energy (transferable by proximity, an airborne contagion) and whatever was in those weird-ass beers he was always drinking. And when they were sprawled across sofas and blankets and chairs, he would've whispered colorful jokes and stories to the ceiling and they wouldn't have been able to sleep...

"Cas was his friend. He's not--" Sam swallows on dry, salty tears. "None of us are handling it very well."

"Sam." Jo's fine little hand touches his elbow. "It's not your fault."

"But it is," he says, and that's as far as he can go without crying like a pansy-ass girl but he keeps going, squeezes himself into the tiny circle of her arms and tells her a story about blood, a monster called Lucifer, and a boy named Sam.

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**Thus ends Chapter Two...**

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	3. Chapter 3

**Supernatural** and its associated characters belong to **Eric Kripke** (lucky duck!)

_Author's Note_: **It's the third chapter! Holy crap, where did this thing come from? Only a few moments behind the posting of Chapter 2!! It came from my notebook...and it's the last chapter I have really thoroughly sketched out. So enjoy this deluge of writing, because it'll take a bit longer from now on. **

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Castiel is dreamwalking, passing through shimmering bedrooms and faceless lovers and quiet blue waters lined in fresh spring grass without purpose. He feels better here, in these silent, better worlds, without Joanna's questions and Sam's kindness and Bobby's silence pressing awkwardly into the bruised place in his chest. The hollowness in his belly, the thickness and bitterness of the inside of his mouth, the weakness in the arms and legs...they're nonexistent here, in this place where he is pure thought and essence freed (_at last_) from mortal trappings. He's not hoping to find Dean. Honestly.

The Angel takes a step out of a dream painted in butterfly wings and onto the smooth marble sand of a beach, with a warm green expanse of ocean stretched out to the edges of the soul and the only sign of a human presence is a candy colored umbrella. He can barely see the profile of the man tucked beneath it and he knows it's Dean, and he sprawls in the sand and sighs because _he's found him_. The earth is warm and the sky is bright and Castiel doesn't realize he's been spotted until a shadow cuts across the sand and Dean hauls him to his feet, clapping him on the back and chest with childlike enthusiasm.

"What are _you _doing here? Holy shit man, I thought you were dead!"

"Dean," he chokes around the gap in his heart and the fist in his throat, and the laughter slides off the eldest Winchester's face. His expression becomes quieter, calculating; he's trying to see how much Castiel knows, what he's already guessed. A second sun burns hot in the sky up above.

"I had to do it, Cas." His eyes are sad, out of place in the sun and sand. "Zach woulda killed Sammy if I hadn't."

And though it's not his place to judge Dean Winchester or his actions, Castiel closes his fingers and strikes him on the cheek because how could he believe that Sam would have chosen this for him? That he wouldn't have died so that Dean could keep his body, keep running from the asteroid with its iron shackles and burning voice? Dean falls silently onto the sand and Castiel follows, gripping handfuls of his shirt and shaking him vigorously because it's _not fair_, and he feels wetness on his human face.

"You think too little of yourself!" Frost creeps over the sand, and all the light has been pulled into the second sun which is burning fierce and hot through the sapphire sky.

"I'm helping," Dean gasps, and his face is bruised and his eyelashes damp and the lie rattles in his chest. "Please, Cas..."

And the Angel realizes he's not begging for mercy but for understanding; the lie is all that stands between him and the horrible reality of an eternity spent chained to an archangel, and it's better if Dean thinks that Michael will use him properly. He falls back, sits and watches Dean roll and pant into the earth, eyes the same color as the endless ocean darken with shame and misery. Then Castiel's heart burns in his human chest, angry and crimson against pale tissue and cloth, because this is Dean giving up. This is surrender.

"Get out, Dean Winchester," and his true voice pierces Jimmy's vocal cords and his throat tastes like blood. "Fight back!"

"I can't," Dean whispers. "Cas, he's too big. I don't...I can't make myself _fit_."

"Then make _him _leave."

And something hardens in the line of Dean's jaw and his ocean-eyes are bright like an angel's and Castiel thinks he can almost see the shadowy print of wings on the sand. But it's not Michael; it's Dean, Dean in the eyes of frightened children, lost souls, Lucifer's angels. The sight, pure and unrestrained by flesh and bone and reality, is almost too brilliant and beautiful to stand, and Castiel's grace swells with pride.

"Don't stop looking," the eldest Winchester says firmly, and Castiel can barely manage a nod before the edges of reality come streaking to the point between the heavens and the sea, the core of the second sun, and Castiel is ripped out of a mind with no room left for him.

*~*~*~*~*~*

Ellen shivers when the Angel wakes up, because damn there's just something ancient in his eyes, something that can see straight through the fabric of her soul, and it speaks and moves and breathes like a man and it scares the hell out of her. The heat of uncurled wrath and battlefield mercy rolls off his body, slender and small and damp with unhealthy sweat and sour saliva, and she's surprised to hear his human voice when he speaks.

"Where is Sam?" He sits up, a line appearing between his eyebrows as his throat works and burns against the sickness. The mother in her is already in motion, pushing him down.

"He was headin' for bed, asked me to check--"

"We don't have time for sleep," he says, a note of desperation in his voice as he strains against her foolish hands, pressed with maternal surety against his narrow shoulders. Maybe if he weren't sick he could have managed to get away (and snapped her arms off in the process); weakened, his childish struggles bring the faintest of smiles to her lips as she almost forgets that this body is the vessel of an angel. _Almost_.

Then he looks straight at her, through her, inside her, eternal loveliness shifting behind its human mask, defying its slight frame and thin, appealing face, and Ellen's silly hands let him up at last. The palms are red, tender as a sunburn, and maybe that's what she has because the faintest wisp of smoke curls off the very tips of Castiel's hair and the cuff of his dress shirt.

"Ellen," the Angel says. "Tell Sam I've gone to look for Dean."

A pause, and Ellen can feel gratitude and relief in it; hers, because if anyone can find Dean, it's going to be an Angel of the Lord.

"Do you know where to start?" she asks.

He frowns and shakes his head, like he hasn't thought of a start, just a continuous flow and an end when he finds Dean.

"No. But I promised him I'd look." His voice is firm, stout, and Ellen begins to see why Dean liked this angel. "Tell Sam."

And he is gone, and when Ellen closes her eyes she can still see the outline of his wings, and she whispers a silent _thank you_ to the being that first created them.

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**Farewell, Chapter Three...**

**_Te gusta? No te gusta? Review please! _**


	4. Chapter 4

**Supernatural** and its associated characters belong to **Eric Kripke** (lucky duck!)

_Author's Note_: **Introducing Chapter 4...it wasn't as long as I thought it'd be between chapter posts. Funny ol' world, innit?**

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_The odd man is familiar to the Biggerson's' six'o'clock shift, though none of them can tell her who he is or how he gets there, into the cramped corner booth with his empty wallet and emptier eyes. Alex the Busboy says he's their own personal ghost, the troubled spirit of a suicidal customer, but as far as she knows ghosts don't eat hamburgers and apple pie, and their hair doesn't smell like spearmint and snow. She knows that she writes about him sometimes, that sad blue eyed man; he becomes a millionaire who lost everything in the stock market crash, an enchanted prince swindled out of his kingdom, a magician whose family was consumed by a trick gone wrong. The stories are always thick with words like "grief" and "mourning", and they all end the same way: love discovered in a corner booth at Biggerson's. _Yeah, right.

_She looks up from her copy of Entertainment Weekly, which she only brings in because after eight the place is deserted and it's four long hours until her shift is over, and is very surprised to see the blue-eyed man standing in front of her. Well, across the counter from her, if she wants to get literal (she doesn't) and then he speaks._

_"Are you alright?" And his voice is rough and deep, not the soft tenor of her imagination, and heat rises in her cheeks because she can't get her mouth to work and she's staring like a dumb fool._

_"Faith," she replies, though **fuckfuckfuck **he didn't ask for her name but she doesn't want to tell him about her crap life and sucky new apartment complete with rats, bad wiring, and nonexistent heaitng. He smiles a little, softly, like she's told him a joke he's heard a million times before, and orders a slice of apple pie to go, please._

_"Will that be all, sir?" she asks._

_"Yes," he says, and Faith Littleton knows he won't be back in the corner booth the next day, or the day after, and maybe never again, and she walks into the kitchen and cries for reasons even she can't fully explain._

_Margaret sends her home early._

_---------_

_Her apartment is silent, the faint _scritchscritch _of a rat running in the wall and the desperate flicker of a muted TV all the welcome home she gets, and it's been like that for a year now but it bothers her tonight. She wonders if it has anything to do with the blue-eyed man's leaving, because she'd begun to believe her life would start where her stories ended and now he's gone forever. She hopes not. She hopes she's not that pathetic. Faith hangs her things up on the battered wooden coatrack and walks up to her equally battered sofa._

_The mattress folds awkwardly out of the sofa, too big for one person and she thinks again of spearmint, snow, and apple pie. She sighs; her breath is a white flower in the air and Faith only has time to mutter something unpleasant about realtors before she falls forward, the cap of her skull hitting the TV stand and when she manages to turn around there is a dead man in her living room. His skin is pale blue (or maybe gray) and the skin has worn off his fingertips and his throat is slashed open, vocal cords and dessicated meat peeking through. Faith screams because there's a knife in those bone-fingers and she can see herself in the dead man's place, neck split open and then he flickers like a TV image on fast forward and pulls her head back..._

_And dissolves in a swirl of red and white ash, and blue eyes pin her to the floor._

_"Stay here," her savior whispers, and he presses an iron poker into her hand. She's about to close her fingers around it when something moves out of the corner of her eye and the dead man grabs the other's collar, hurls him into the wall and she hears bone break over the sound of her own screaming._

_"CAS!" A tall, handsome man appears in the doorway, whic she just now realizes has been kicked open and __**who's going to pay for that?** when it happens._

_The blue-eyed man begins to glow, his eyes twin flames in the dark and his face white-hot, and the dead man is roaring and the walls are starting to split. A sharp, piercing hum cuts her ears and something warm is dribbling down her neck and OhmyGod, Faith is seeing an angel for the first time. He's beauty incarnate, power personified, and his wings are huge and soft and black and the dead man begins to crumble in the face of his glory. She squeezes her eyes shut when the light becomes too bright to bear, but the sight is forever printed on her eyelids, the swirl of her soul and for the first time in her life Faith believes in God._

_---------_

_Castiel and Sam pick their way over to Faith Littleton, who is small and quiet where she has pressed herself into the space between the bed and the television stand, fingers clamped obediently around Castiel's iron poker. Her large, dark eyes are fixed on the Angel's face with worshipful awe, cheeks pale and streaked with dust and her own blood, and she gasps when Castiel touches her thick black hair and his fingers come away sticky and red._

_"Don't," she whispers. "Your hands..."_

_He sees her try to sit up, follow the line of his hand as he places it back by his side and he remembers sickness on the floor of a house full of angels and Sam pushes her back into the carpet._

_"We're gonna call 911," he tells her._

_"Uh, p-phone's in the kitchen," she says, and Castiel remembers watching her at the register, so sweet and friendly that he'd thought she'd make a perfect angel. She looks different now, pinched and unhappy after nights spent in a home occupied by evil, and Castiel is unable to keep himself from frowning. Why is it always the best humans who endure the worst trials? And he remembers a beach, and a man who used to love his brother and fast cars, and he huffs out an unhappy sigh._

_"Hey," Faith says, matter-of-factly. "You're an angel."_

_"Yes."_

_"You saved my life," and he hears Dean in her voice, disbelieving and small and his heart breaks for this angel-girl with her night eyes and sweet face._

_"Good things do happen," he replies._

_And from that moment on Faith and Castiel are inseparable._

*~*~*~*~*~*

_**Present**_

He's slow to answer the door for two reasons, the first being that his left leg is still, for all intents and purposes, petrified below the knee. Has been since Missouri, but he doesn't like to think about that because he can still recall it all so clearly, the demon's face and the curl and twist of the magic that had crippled him..._Sam! Are you in there?_

The other reason he's come to hate the door is because he knows it's Faith. It's _always _Faith. Sam Winchester breathes a curse into the thick wood of the door before he opens it and there she stands, mascara and eyeliner streaked across her full-moon face and he already knows what's wrong but he can't seem to press his voice into action quickly enough to keep her out. She slides past him into the motel room, which is covered in newspaper articles and notebook paper with "vital information" printed at the top of each and every piece but none of it means anything because Castiel's picked up hunting again.

"He'll be back," he says, but he must not sound convincing because she bursts out laughing and it's sharp, and pained, and Sam remembers the fifteenth time Cas came back from a hunt without Dean and spent hours vomiting in the bathroom; her laugh sounds like that.

"Maybe," she replies.

They sit at the same time, Faith keeping her hands folded neatly in her lap and Sam sprawling out like Dean used to, because he has to keep something of his brother and this is all he's found that means anything, and their unspoken words squeeze into a silence too small to fit all of them.

"I can feel him," Faith says at last, and Sam lets out a breath he didn't know he'd pulled in. "Dean. I never even met the man, but I know what he feels like."

He's not sure whether he wants to hug her or slap her, or maybe both, for claiming a connection to his brother but in the end he stays still, because his leg hurts and his heart aches and his mind is already hundreds of miles away, skimming over cities and cornfields with Cas. He remembers flying with him once, just once, in one of those life-or-death situations he finds himself in more and more now Dean's not around to suppress his idiotic tendencies. Angelic flight is all hot wind and ringing bells; he wonders if Dean enjoys it now, three months into his new passenger-seat life. Realizes Faith is talking and has been for a while, and tries to rearrange his face into something soft and concerned. It used to come easily.

"Why wouldn't he take me with him?" She sounds close to tears. Sam can't bring himself to feel sorry for her, not really. Anyone who tries to travel with an angel is a fool; it took Sam a long time to realize that angels are more driven than Winchesters to the power of infinity, and when he finally did he stopped looking for Cas. There's just no point to chasing after someone on a wild goose chase.

"Go home, Faith."

"Not without him," she whispers. "Oh God, I can't go home without him."

_Silly girl_, he thinks. _Didn't your mother ever teach you not to fall in love with angels?_

The words slip out. Faith doesn't stay very long after that.

* * *

**Chapter Four...I love you. But goodbye.**

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	5. Chapter 5

**Supernatural** and its associated characters belong to **Eric Kripke** (who should be reported for abuse and have his mind-children turned over to me!)

_Author's Note_: **Sweet Father of Castiel...what has the Kripster done to my poor baby? If I don't see Cas in the next few episodes, I will personally hunt the man down and do something....UNPLEASANT! I am Cas-fangirl, HEAR ME RAWR!**

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He's caught in the fray, swirled into the mix of Heaven and Hell and gore spatters his face as he whips his blade across the throat of a man with yellow hair and pitch-colored eyes and this is how it's always been but he pities the vessel today. He whispers a prayer for its soul as he squares off against his next opponent, a petite redhead whose skin is burned and sloughing off, and manages to dispatch her with a sloppy jab through the skull. Something unpleasantly greasy oozes through the gap in the bone and pools against his hand; as he fights to pull the slick blade out of the girl, another demon falls on him, digging its fingers into the points of his shoulderblades.

He screams in pain as it drives him into the thick Oregon dirt, his nostrils filling with bloodied earth and a pool of unpleasantly mixed fluids, the combination of texture and scent making him gag. In the way of the alligator, he attempts a death roll, crushing his attacker underneath him; but they are unevenly matched in terms of weight and he is quickly flipped and thrust into the dirt again. Weaponless, he forces his wings out of tattered shoulders and instantly burns the demon's eyes out, feels the thick splatter of its melted corneas on the shoulders of his jacket. Its weight diminishes (as expected) and he finds his legs somewhere deep in the mud and tucks them underneath his body, prepared to roll back to his feet...and then there's a sharp bolt of pain and he can't find his legs anymore. He crumbles to the ground without them, fingernails sliding uselessly through the churned dirt as he tries to turn, tries to understand what has happened and heat floods in the small of his back and the weight returns and he shouts,_"NO!"_

He squirms in the muck, feels the blind demon's laughter as its fingers slide through the soft tissues protecting the thin rail of bone in his back--spinal cord-- and screams in agony as it snaps it in two. His face feels thick, heavy with drying mud and gunk; it fills his mouth. He chokes.

"CASTIEL!" His name quivers in the air, thunder in the mountains and a blade whistles through the fabric of reality and blood sprays Castiel's hair, the back of his neck. He gasps in relief and reaches for his grace, using it to knit together skin and muscle and bone; the battle slows around him.

"Oh Cas...brother, please..." A firm hand grasps the nape of his neck, slick with demon blood and he knows by the gentle whorl of the fingerprints and the beat of the heart that it's Dean Winchester, the same as he left him two months ago on the too-bright beach in his captive mind. And he groans because Michael's still in that body too, a second sun burning where there should be space and _somehow he'd forgotten._

"Are you okay?" Michael asks, but Cas likes to think there's more Dean than archangel in his voice. Another hand catches Castiel's shoulder, rolls him very carefully onto his back (he can still feel his pulse against the skin, pink and tender) "_**Castiel**_!"

"Yes," Castiel replies, leaning forward and up until the cap of his skull touches the line of his brother's jaw and by barely extending his grace he can feel Michael flaming in Dean's skin and Dean only a hairsbreadth beyond that.

"Hmm." Michael's chest vibrates under Castiel's filthy palms, thoughtful and rough like the calluses on his vessel's hands. "Looking for something, little brother?"

Warmth spreads her gentle wings under his skin, light pink feathers scattered on the flesh of his throat, chest and ears and he tucks himself a little closer to Michael, as if the closeness can erase the question. With a sigh, Dean's fingers close over the sleeve of his coat and catch on the smooth fabric, and Michael's lips touch the very center of his forehead and somewhere in the smell of lightning and Glory there's the Impala and motel shampoo and Castiel has hope. Maybe Michael can tell, because his green eyes are sharp and hard with understanding when he rises up, the crown of his head collecting a circle of sunlight rather like a halo, and he pins Castiel to the earth with his Winchester eyes for the space of a human heartbeat.

"My work here is far from done, Castiel."

Then he, the angels, and the trees are gone, replaced by a sky purple and blue with clouds whose bellies are stuffed with rain and he tries twice to reach for Michael's presence but his brother is nowhere to be found: hiding from family who doesn't want him, the world, or Lucifer without Dean. He understands what it is to be unwanted, knows full well the sharp sting of rejection and betrayal; Uriel and Anael taught him these things late, but well. What he does not understand is how he can go back to shoveling through jobs with Sam and Faith and Bobby with nothing but the lingering smell and the fading warmth of Dean on his hands, and the latter's ghost pressed like a delicate, dying flower between them and the pages of the unwritten Gospel about a life none of them can experience with him.

_---------_

_Dean Winchester is dreaming._

_Michael is walking past the empty human vessels of his fallen and celestial brethren._

_Dean Winchester is waking up._

_Michael is pulling a satiny black feather out of the mud, still smashed into a print of Castiel's body._

_Dean Winchester is reaching beyond his grasp, fighting to regain feeling and control of his hands; he's never touched an angel's wing before and the idea of touching even a piece of Castiel's fills him with child-like wonder._

_Michael is pushing him back and remembering his little brother's eyes glowing in that too-pale, human face._

_Dean Winchester is feeling anger, horror, and something else... something undefinably and equally human._

_Michael is feeling. Michael is looking up and seeing Dumah, the silent brother, fall to the ground and the sound of his death is as noiseless as his life. Michael is shaping a sword out of the Father's Creation and listening to his brother, his _favorite_ brother, laugh as ten, twenty...fifty demons fall on him and crush his vessel into the earth. Michael is fighting. Michael is losing._

_Dean Winchester is screaming as a hand closes over the mouth that used to work for him and his head is pulled back and Lucifer, his vessel's face burnt and peeling, peers into his eyes and he sees what Michael sees; the photo negative of angelic grace, the polar opposite of all things good and clean and pure._

_"Hello, brother," he says. And neither Michael nor Dean is entirely sure which of them he's speaking to._

*~*~*~*~*~*

Bobby pulls idly on the wheel of his chair, sends it spinning in a slow and lazy circle; the grounded version of an aerial nosedive. He's waiting for Castiel and Sam to finish up in the panic room, waiting to see Faith leave the half-open door into the basement because they're coming back up to share exactly what was or wasn't found this time and he's fairly sure he knows already but he wants to hear it from Cas. _I found Dean. He slipped through my fingers 'cause I'm a featherbrained idjit and should know better than to stalk an archangel..._something like that.

"Hey," Faith says softly, and he looks up from his lap and sees her pulling the angel into a more-than-friendly embrace. Cas leans out of it, looking sufficiently awkward enough for all of them and Bobby thinks about all the times he's heard Faith crying in the night when he's gone and feels a sudden surge of embarrassment.

"So," Sam says, limping to the closest chair and collapsing in it. "Dean's alive and fighting evil somewhere in Oregon."

Silence stretches between them, tight and quivering as they watch Castiel's face, more expressive now he's finally decided to let Heaven make some other sap its bitch and Bobby sees pain in the lines of his forehead and the unearthly blue of his eyes. That's not all there is...the silence stretches for another beat before each realizes Cas isn't about to explain exactly what happened in Oregon and Bobby pulls on a wheel again. He bumps into Sam's knee, brushes against the hem of Cas' hideous Colombo coat and crunches over Faith's battered Timberlands. He spins again, crunches over Faith's shoes and Cas's coat and Sam's knee. Spins again; Sam snags the handle of the wheelchair and jerks the brake lever by the left wheel down. Gone are Bobby's spinnin' days. Gone are his walking days, his hunting days, his useful days, his days spent playing the role of Dean's father and Sam's mentor.

"Gone," he whispers and Sam's head drops and Faith quietly reaches out and takes Castiel's hand and the angel continues staring at the ugly patterned carpet.

* * *

**Sorry this one was shorter, it's more of a filler chapter until I can get to the good stuff. And by good stuff I mean plenty of Winchester whumpage... :)**

**_Te gusta? No te gusta? Review please! _**


	6. Chapter 6

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**Supernatural** and its associated characters belong to **Eric Kripke** (who should be reported for abuse and have his mind-children turned over to me!)

_Author's Note_: **My little space markers AND my italics haven't been working, so if ya notice that everything seems kind of run together and weird...it wasn't that way when I typed it. (the middle segment is supposed to be in italics. Everything else is not).**

Warning: **Contains mildly slashy thingamawhatsits. If you don't ship Dean/Cas (why would you be reading this if ya didn't?), I suggest you stop reading now. **

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Faith's skin is slick with perspiration, thick beads of scentless fluid rolling over her temples and down the bridge of her nose and pulling her shirt tight against the damp skin of her back, and she wonders what her ex would think if he saw her now. Adam was a jogger (an unfortunate side effect of dating a pre-med major; they were all health _freaks_) and he'd always begged her to pull her sorry self out of bed at five in the morning and explore the nearby park trails with him. She'd always said no, that wasn't her thing, thanks, but if he wanted to go out for a Starbucks or visit the closest anime bar, she was his girl.

"GO!" Sam's breath is hot on her neck and his fingers clamp down on her shoulders and force her forward. She's got a cramp in her side the size of Texas and her feet hurt, and all she really wants is to fall down and cry in the grass but she knows Sam won't let her and she hopes Cas won't either so she keeps moving. The parking lot is in sight now, faded orange pools on the rain-slick asphalt as fantastic as she's always imagined Heaven would be and she can vaguely make out the shape of Castiel sitting hunched in the Impala's passenger seat. _Maybe it really is Heaven._ Her Timberlands catch the edge of the parking lot and slide, the momentum driving Faith into the side of the car with a 'whuff' and Sam sees her slip and checks his own speed to avoid losing his balance. He skids gracefully across the hood, practiced fingers catching the driver's door and wrenching it open as Castiel pushes and pulls Faith into the backseat.

_The doors lock solidly behind them. The hollow-eyed Wendigo pauses at the border between forest and civilization, breath fogging up the window closest to Faith's head and she sees four year old Molly Diamond lying on the floor of its cave, golden hair slick with blood and her Hannah Montana denim dress peeled away from the gaping hole in her stomach. The pulse of her faintly-beating heart, just barely visible past the gleaming white bone of her ribs, the last press of her shredded lungs... with a snort, the monster fades back into the trees. Faith can still feel it watching them as Sam floors it and the Impala screeches out of the parking lot and away from Mount Rainier's National Park._

* * *

___Lucifer sits cross-legged outside the chalk sigil, rubbing his vessel's fingertips against the faintly glowing edge of an Archangel's Blade and watching them drip scarlet on the earth. He's desecrating one of the few things the angels have left of God and Michael cannot allow it; he pulls desperately on the chains fastening his hands together above his head, feels plaster and cement chips drift off the ceiling and settle on his hair, the bridge of his nose, his shoulders, nuclear fallout from a bomb that has yet to go off. _"Now," Lucifer says crossly. "Don't go pulling the roof down. It took me ages to find a safe place to keep you."

_"Brother-" Michael strains forward, his grace reaching for and coiling around the silver blade. It hums with the sickly sweetness of corruption and Michael knows it's too late to salvage it, that Lucifer's had his way with it as he's had his way with the human race. Their souls sing with the same decaying purity, thick with hopeless self-righteousness and sin...Dean Winchester swirls resentfully at the base of his neck, an undefinable tightness above the vertebrae and Michael wonders for the thousandth time if his other brethren have ever had as difficult a host. If they've ever fought for control of their own body, found their fingers twitching to the unheard beat of a favorite song, found their eyes slipping over empty angel faces in search of family or friends._

_"Think it's finished?" His fallen brother closes his eyes as if he's listening, as though his ears can still pick up the rotten song of the once-holy weapon. Maybe they can. Lucifer is not the same base, powerless creature he was in the early years of the Fall, and Michael is not acquainted with his brother as he once was._

_"I-."_

_"Hmm. Let's give it a whirl, shall we?__"_

_The Devil rises smoothly to his feet and crosses the chalk sigil, blistered face bright with wicked amusement and Michael only has a moment to note the smooth backward flex of his arm before the Archangel's Blade plunges into his stomach and he's screaming with two voices because the razor's edge is shredding flesh and grace _and _human soul. Dean is a frantic whirl in his chest, his skull, and the blood of his body is glowing with its angelic equal and Lucifer slowly drags the knife up, nicking the uppermost curve of his ribs. Vital organs Michael doesn't really need but was hoping to save for Dean rupture, muscle and skin and the necessary layer of fat splitting and peeling around the blade and the sheer _agony _makes his mouth taste raw and bloody._

_"Vade Satan, inventor er magister omnis fallaciae! Deus caeli, Deus terrae, humiliter majestati gloriae Tuae supplicamus ut ab omni infernalium spirituum potestate, laqueo, deceptione et nequitia,  
omnis fallaciae, libera nos, Domine..."_

_"Michael, Michael." Lucifer's voice is rough and low, his eyes flickering between Crowley's scarlet, Azazel's jaundiced yellow, Lilith's veiny white, and the natural, powder blue of his vessel. "Didn't your daddy ever teach you not to swear?"_

_The blade slashes across his throat, once, and Michael feels Dean's breath, his lifeblood, hot against his chin and the tiny soul quivers and draws smooth edges ripped by Satan's blade into its warmly pulsing center. He is done fighting. _

_The angel would say something to coax him out, to force him on, but he can't find enough space in Dean's ruined body to do anything but scream._

* * *

Castiel pushes his hands over the thick, leather-bound book, creased and cracked from decades of use. There's been one in every room Sam buys, each varying in size and shape and color and age but all inevitably ending up in the trunk of the Impala or the little box in Bobby Singer's attic he set aside for just this purpose. He never even reads them, not anymore; he finds no consolation in the words of the ancient prophets, passed down (they may have even been in his hands once) to a people who weren't really listening. Not really. They sang their worship songs to the ceiling of their churches, whispered verses to the things they feared most in the hopes that it would frighten them away...but where were Dean's songs? Where were Dean's verses? What could he have said or done that would've protected him from an Angel of the Lord?

_By night on my bed I sought him who my soul loveth; I sought him, but found him not. _He touches the tiny print with trembling fingers, surprised that his idle wanderings through his Father's teachings have brought him to this. _I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth? It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go..._

"Cas?" Faith walks out of the bathroom, hair hidden inside a towel wrap neither he nor Sam can quite comprehend. "D'you wanna go out, or something?"

"Go out."

"Yeah, silly. For _food_." Her bright smile doesn't smooth away the purpling flesh under her eyes, the slick red dash of a cut on her cheekbone. He wishes she'd go away. He wishes she'd find a better life for herself. _He wishes he could stand to send her home_. "Well?"

"I don't eat," he says numbly. The smile quivers, and he sees for an instant that which his Grace used to be able to tell him; Faith is scared. Faith is tired, Faith is angry, Faith is lonely, Faith is homesick, Faith is hopelessly and irrevocably in love... he balks at the last. _Love_. "I-"

"Dean would want you to eat," she says firmly. "I bet you didn't starve yourself when he was around."

"Faith...my body doesn't require-"

She slides the towel away from her hair; it's longer than it was when they first met, and it looks like a living shadow curled around the soft wings of her shoulderblades. Castiel is suddenly struck with the urge to touch, the way he used to when Dean was sleeping and his mind was swirling with Hell and pain and the angel could wipe it away with one finger. He remembers tracing the smooth lines of Dean Winchester's face, trying to understand why it was humans judged each other on this collection of color and bones and flesh stretched tight over the brittle frame. He frowns and places his hands underneath him, effectively crushing the temptation. _But I found **him **whom my soul loveth: I held **him**, and would not let **him **go..._

_"_Cas?" Faith asks quietly, staring at her reflection in the age-spotted vanity. All traces of teasing and good humor have vanished from her face, her tired, ancient eyes. "Have you ever been in love?"

"...I couldn't say," he replies. "I don't experience things the way humans do."

But even as he tells her, his heart aches for green eyes and bright smiles and Golden Oldies and he knows he's lying.

* * *

**Sorry this one was shorter, it's more of a filler chapter until I can get to the good stuff. And by good stuff I mean plenty of Winchester whumpage... :)**

**And DAMN, it's been a long time since I worked on this...lo siento, chicas/chicos! FF hates me, won't let me do those nifty ***** anymore...*sigh* Sucks to be me. Haha!**

**_Te gusta? No te gusta? Review please! _**


	7. Chapter 7

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**Supernatural** and its associated characters belong to **Eric Kripke** (who should be reported for abuse and have his mind-children turned over to me!)

_Author's Note_: **My little space markers STILL aren't working! Sorry people, if you've been confused this whole time as to where one segment began and another ended...grrr, !**

Warning: **There's a bit of slash goin' on... if you look really, REALLY hard. So, y'know...watch out, and stuff. :) **

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Sam sighs and presses his forehead against the upper curve of the Impala's steering wheel, inhaling the just-barely-there scent of booze, blood, and leather. The damn thing's got impressions of Dean's thick, crooked fingers -shifted just above the wider impression of John Winchester's equally crooked and graceless fingers- on it, a constant reminder of his brother. The brother he's probably not ever going to get back, not really. Maybe they'll meet each other in Hell, or wherever it is worldly hunters/angel condoms and blood-sucking Psychics of Satan go when they die. Or maybe, by some miracle, Michael will scatter Lucifer's atoms across the universe and dump Dean on Bobby's front porch...drooling and hollow-eyed and completely incapable of speaking, moving, or wiping his own ass.

Sam's not a pessimist.

He's been thinking about it for a long time, ever since he and Cas caught a sneak peek at what was left of Donnie Finnerman after Raphael took a stroll in his meat-suit. Castiel had said at the time that Donnie hadn't fought Raphael, that he'd let the angel feed every last ounce of strength and self and thought into his grace, that when Raphael left the body, he'd taken the soul with him; the angel just hadn't stopped to consider it. He'd just _taken_, and that was the end.

"He doesn't have faith, Sam. Not the faith it would take to completely give himself over to Michael." Castiel's voice is soft, barely audible above the hammer of spring rain and swift Seattle wind; the hand that suddenly curves over the back of the seat is softer, almost less tangible than the voice and the electric, shifting presence combined. Sam doesn't miss Faith's soft _huh_ or the way she's abruptly absorbed by the app on her iPhone, but he chooses to ignore it. He and Faith are destined to hate each other for all eternity, and that's one aspect of destiny Sam doesn't think he'll have any issues following through on.

"Yeah."

They pile out of the Impala, slick and black under the onslaught and Sam wants to press his cheek against it, feel it steaming and humming itself to sleep and finally understand why Dean was so in love with this car. Why he spent weeks building it up from nothing, and left all the little important pieces; the Legos Dean stuffed in the vents, the army man Sam wedged into the ashtray, the clumsy knife-carvings _D.W. S.W. _

"Sam!" Faith hurls his duffel at him, shaking her hair out of her eyes. There's no denying she's a beautiful girl (if he were Dean, he'd probably have banged her already), but her idiocy and generally sickening angel-love takes that bright, shiny new-chick edge off in a matter of minutes.

The object of Faith's sickening love gasps behind him, and when Sam turns the only angel worth meeting is rubbing his fingers over the Impala's hood, his expression thick and unreadable.

"Something's wrong," Castiel says quietly. He's so quiet these days, after all the sleeping pills and dream-root Bobby could scrounge up couldn't lead him to Dean, after a hundred thousand encantations in languages that hadn't been spoken by people for thousands of years failed to summon Michael, after weeks of constant flight and interrogation hadn't given them any new information about Dean or aforementioned Archangel's whereabouts. "Sam, something is-"

"Cas?" Sam grasps the angel's shoulders and is once again amazed by how little he is, how Sam's hands can swallow the bone and the flesh and the fabric in one fell swoop. "Cas, what is it? ...are you about to be sick again?"

"Not me." He turns out of Sam's grip and bends over the hood of the Impala, breath puffing quickly in and out of his mouth, a white pool on the black metal. His hands come up to his face, the fingers digging into skin stretched tightly over bone; he looks like Sam felt after he'd had a vision, like Dean might have looked when Sam hurled an iron bell into his consciousness. Sam tries to remember what Dean said, where he placed his hands, because out of everything related to those drawn-out migraines, the most important was how safe, how sheltered and completely indestructible his older brother had made him feel. With just words and hands, the only things Dean had that were worth anything, that he could really call _his_ and not Dad's or Some Guy I Ripped Off in a Bar's, Dean had given him a home and a family.

A slender shadow slides in front of him and places smooth, white hands in the center of Castiel's back, rubbing very slowly and murmuring something soft and unintelligible over the downpour's quick watery heartbeat. The angel groans; crimson blossoms under his fingertips, dribbles from his nose. _Dean's gonna hate that._

"Sam, what's going on?" Faith lifts Castiel's head away from the Impala, places her palm under his chin and collects the diluted blood streaming down his face.

"I don't know." Perplexed, Sam scrubs his fingers through the angel's thick black hair (it _feels _dry and soft and warm under his palms, although it _looks _soaking wet) and uses his grip to check Castiel's eyes, the color of his face, his temperature. "Cas? Cas!" There's no response; his friend is boneless, unresponsive. "I'll take him in. Faith, you lock the car-"

"Yeah." She's aged ten years in the space of a minute, her hands as quick and experienced as a hunter's as she fishes out the remainder of the luggage and runs inside the motel. He doesn't know what lie she'll tell the clerk; he's got an armful of dead-to-the-world angel and a head spinning with a thousand questions, and he couldn't care less whether they're checked in as the Osbournes or the Beatles.

And then quite suddenly, Mr. Comatose revives.

"NO!" He screams in two voices and pushes Sam back so hard the youngest Winchester finds himself on the hood of the Impala in a heartbeat, feet scrabbling for purchase on the slick metal. Castiel doubles over as though he's been punched (and yeah, it's happened a few times since Dean left) and screams again, and the sound makes Sam's ears bleed and his heart break; he's pretty sure a few windows shatter too, although he's not really concerned with them at this particular juncture.

"Cas..."

"YOU CANNOT HAVE HIM!" Castiel is on his hands and knees now, voice raw and sharp and _furious. _If Sam hadn't understood Heavenly wrath before, he could have written a book on it now, listening to his brother's angel scream at something beyond his earshot... perhaps even beyond his plane. "YOU CANNOT TAKE HIM FROM ME!"

"What is going on here?" The manager and Faith are both standing in the rain with them, humiliating observers to Castiel's breakdown. Sam wants to push them both inside; this is something personal, something written and breaking deep in the heart of who Castiel is. Maybe the angel doesn't even know what it is yet, but it's there and it's being destroyed before their very eyes and the young Winchester realizes for the first time that he's straight out _crying _in a Dean-repellent chick flick way_._

_"Chill." _Sam walks up to Castiel and slides to the ground, his face absorbed by that thick mess of black hair and his arm intimately familiar with the hard fragility of the angel's borrowed ribcage. He might even feel Enochian sigils on the bone.

"Hey," he whispers. "It's gonna be okay..."

"NO." Castiel replies, and his return to gentility is almost as disturbing as his shift into rage. "No it's not." His ribs jerk against the muscle of Sam's forearm in what might have been a swallowed sob, another outcry choked by grace and self-consciousness. "Sam, he has Dean."

"Who-"

"Lucifer." The little angel sighs, and the sound comes from the depths of his soul, that newly broken place inside his chest. "The Devil has Dean."

**Warehouse**

They take turns.

It's not something Dean thought he'd ever do with Michael, because the guy's a total white-winged douche and he'd rather let the angel take the brunt of it because _hey_! humans don't exactly come equipped with Instant Heal-a-Powers.

But after hours and days and weeks of hiding behind pained radio-static screams and flickering grace and tattered wings, Dean and the Archangel reach an agreement. It's not one either of them would have chosen under better circumstances -Dean would rather have his body _after _Michael's done throwing it at Satan, and Michael would rather use his body to beat the whole Apocalypse spiel out of his brother's whacked out head- but things being the way they are, it's the best they can come up with. So Dean takes his turn being pushed to the forefront, filling up nerves and muscle and flesh that haven't been his in months and being forced through hours of torture; Lucifer could've given Alastair a run for his money. Hell, he could have _taught _Alastair a few things.

"Ah, hello." The Devil slaps him jovially on the cheek, splitting a gash that Michael must have felt but Dean was safely hidden from at the time of its infliction. "I'm dealing with Dean now, right?"

Dean tries to speak, he really does, but his mouth and throat are swelling with copper and fire and the words burn out somewhere in his chest. Michael is a mute presence in the back of his head, an untouchable swirl of Enochian sigils and ancient, frayed power; he's really on his own for the first time in months.

He wishes he could appreciate it more.

"So tell me," Lucifer says, calmly lifting the deadened Archangel's Blade out of his back pocket (Dean wishes he'd cut his ass off). "Does your family have a history of cardiovascular disease?"

And he presses that freakishly huge angel-knife into the hunter's chest, splits flesh and muscle in a rift that spans from Dean's sternum to the waistband of his jeans and before Dean has time to comprehend what's happening to him, the Devil's hands slide smoothly through the gap and force bones back and away from trembling vital organs; the pain is indescribable. And Dean's been to _Hell_.

"Oh." Frostbitten fingers close around the thick, vital red muscle buried deep in his chest and Dean can feel his own pulse against the pads and he twists in helpless, speechless agony. The chains binding his wrists to the ceiling rasp and grate, the sound throbbing through the vaccuum pressing against either side of his head and almost drowning out the fallen angel's voice. "It's... smaller than I'd pictured."

He squeezes, and Dean reaches for Michael and finds a void instead.

_Where are you? _

**Seattle, Washington: ****_Five hours earlier_**

Faith flips idly through the thick, leather binder she "borrowed" from the locker in Bobby's panic room; it's mostly things she already knew, stuff about Seals and Witnesses and Lucifer Walking Free. There are medieval scratchings of angels that look suspiciously like Cate Blanchett, demons with curling horns and shark-toothed smiles, and a few knights in shining armor that bear no resemblance to either of the Brothers Winchester; the binder's classic B.M. (before Michael) literature, narrated in Bobby's untidy slant, but sometimes in the margins or on a scrap of floating loose-leaf paper she'll find Enochian rituals or laundry lists _for _the rituals. And Faith's an angel-magic kind of girl.

"Cas-"

She turns to face the other side of the hotel room, but finds Sam and Cas slumped over the cheap Ikea table; they're passed out, which may or may not have had something to do with the rapid consumption of every ounce of alcohol in the minibar. She's getting up to drag them into the spare bed (they've shared before, when there wasn't enough money to rent two separate rooms), and then she sees _them_.

The keys to the Impala, carelessly tossed on the keyboard of Sam's laptop, scratched and greasy and basking in the thick blue glow the screen. Once upon a time, Dean Winchester wrapped his fingers around the ignition key, and with a single twist, he'd started the Apocalypse. In the hands of an untrained girl from Wisconsin, desperately in love with a divine being and looking ahead at a future as unknown as that of the Winchesters, who knew what could be done with them? Faith looks between the keys and Castiel, struggling between one temptation and the next; while the angel might not demonstrate feelings as physically as a human girl might hope, it's become obvious he has _some _feelings for Faith... though they don't hold a candle to his larger mission of finding Dean. But while Sam's grateful for that, Faith's definitely _not_. Which puts her in a precarious position, with a series of life-altering, character determining questions to ask, like... would Castiel appreciate what she's trying to do? Would he thank her for it, if he knew? Would he be able to move on if Dean came back, healthy and happy and angel-free?

"Cas." She shakes his shoulder, hoping to wake him; she wants him to have some idea of where she's going, so he can reach and find and fly to her and watch her bring back his precious...

_"Dean," _Castiel whispers his name with the sort of prayerful adoration Faith's been searching for her whole life and thought maybe she'd found in a corner booth at Biggerson's, and is only just realizing wasn't meant to be.

With one word, he makes her choice for her.

The angel begins to shift and she thinks his eyes open a bit and maybe he even asks where she's going, but she doesn't stick around long enough to make sure. She has the keys and the binder and the laundry list, and she's not coming back without Dean Winchester.

* * *

And so it happens that a young woman finds herself in the middle of an empty field, its crops long since harvested and sold, the dead earth good for nothing until the season begins again. She doesn't even know what they used to grow here, and she doesn't need to; the field will serve its purpose and once it's all over she'll never have to see it again. It's quiet, relatively isolated; the closest highway is five miles off, but the soft displacement of air and the roaming of headlights suggests the presence of civilization and human beings. Not close enough for her to get help if something goes wrong, but close enough that if all goes well, Dean Winchester will have her back in Seattle before Sam and Castiel wake up. She begins.

_____"RAAGYOSL, E VYN NONKYF ASPT POAMAL DE ZYLD: NYYS OD DLUGA LONSA DE SYBSY MYRK OY TALHO." _The words are heavy on her tongue, thick and ancient and powerful and for the first time Faith wonders if this is the right thing to do, if maybe she's in over her head. But the earth is shaking and a harsh white glow swells up over the horizon, and she's almost done... _____"__LSRAHPM, SAYYNOV, LAVAXRP, SLGAYOL, SOAHZNT, LYGDYSA: NYYS OD DLUGA KARS MYKAOLZ LONSA TA Y OROKH PAYD MYRK OY TOLHO. __OY TALHO Y PLOSY AFFA ZYZOP."_

Glory and Grace and Power wash over the night sky and she falls to her knees, burying her face in the dirt and clasping her fingers over her ears; Michael is the scream of chalk on a chalk board spanning the universe, the sticky heat of napalm, the light of Washington D.C.'s Fourth of July fireworks show increased to the ten-thousandth fold and Faith is certain she's done something wrong because Michael was supposed to be _Dean. _She had seen this going differently, imagined man and Archangel separated as Cas had always hoped; she'd never pictured the entire world crumbling around her, taking Sam and Bobby and Castiel and six billion human beings and their cities and cars and cellphones with it into the darkness of space...

All is still. Faith takes a deep, slow breath and lifts her head; the sound of the highway flows on uninterrupted, the skies are dark and clear and set with an infinite number of stars, and the only change in all the crumbling world is that she is no longer alone in the field.

The disintegrating corpse of Adam Milligan, her pre-med freak of a college boyfriend, sprawls across her lap and it's thin and bony and blackened by fire, and she hadn't even known he was _dead_. He'd just...called her in the middle of the night and said he'd gone to visit his mother. _I'll be back soon, baby. I love you. _But when he hadn't come back soon, Faith had stopped caring about higher education or earning a bachelor's degree, and started working at Biggerson's and maybe this is her act in the Great Winchester Tragedy; she places a trembling hand on the flaking skull, leans and watches threads of eye-watering silver twist behind the empty sockets.

"Adam?"

With a shudder and a groan, the corpse begins to rebuild itself and it's like watching a cremation in reverse; the skin comes back in peachy patches, followed by the organs and the clear blue eyes and the crisp white color of the bone, and at the end soft blond hair folds out of the scalp and tickles the palm of her hand.

The recreated man inhales with a suddenness that tests her quivering nerves, long fingers gripping handfuls of the damp earth as delicate lids slide away from the midnight and glacier-ice of the eye. He looks at her for a moment, but it's not her college lover's beautiful, awkward soul spinning behind the sweet eyes, the friendly face.

"What have you _done_?" Michael asks.

* * *

**Okie dokie artichokies... so... this is another filler chapter. I'm trying to get the ball rolling on the good stuff, don't worry! :)**

**_Te gusta? No te gusta? Review please! _**


	8. Chapter 8

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**Supernatural** and its associated characters belong to **Eric Kripke** (who should be reported for abuse and have his mind-children turned over to me!)

_Author's Note_: **My little space markers STILL aren't working! Sorry people, if you've been confused this whole time as to where one segment began and another ended...grrr, !**

Warning: **AViewer discretion is advised: some fairly dark stuff goin' on in here (well, it's dark for _me_). **

**Also...is anyone else getting sick of Faith at this point? I'm trying to keep her out of Mary-Sue realm, but I'll let you decide whether or not I failed. **

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**Warehouse**

He shudders back into consciousness when Lucifer tips the razor edge of his blade into the scarlet welt on Dean's shoulder, murmuring something about impossibilities and grace and Dean couldn't care less because that's _Castiel's _and goddamn _Lucifer _shouldn't be anywhere near it_. _He can almost feel Castiel agreeing with him, his angel, all midnight and ocean and snow, fire and water and sunlight and something like a man rolled into one stuffily dressed package. Castiel; the faintest flutter of wings, the soft smell of rain and chocolate and something deliciously organic in the rough, shadowed curve of his jaw, the deepest register of thunder buried in his voice... if Dean were ever to write a book of things he knew, the angel would be the second entry, right behind Sam (aka World's Biggest Pain in the Mother-Lovin' Ass). He wonders when Castiel became so important.

_Dean! _He thinks he hears the roll of thunder, the light crinkle of a tan trenchcoat; he thinks he feels warm hands on his chest, pressing life and strength and will into the weary heart Lucifer had gripped in his frostbitten fingers days, weeks, _hours _before and he reaches for it with everything he's got left, straining against his chains and praying for a miracle. Then the knife slides under flesh and maybe scrapes bone as the Devil strips away Castiel's mark, and there are no words spoken in Heaven or Hell that describe the pain; it's physical, spiritual, emotional, visceral, insurmountable, something felt with body, mind, and soul.

"There there," Lucifer's breath is icy-hot, singing and freezing bruised and ruined skin and the tears Dean hadn't felt on his cheeks. "Isn't that better?"

He can't even scream.

**Seattle, Washington: **

Michael's not quite used to Adam Milligan's body yet. It's very different from Dean's, thin and hollow where Dean was thick and muscular, soft and pale where Dean was scarred and tan; it's smaller too, and the hair is thick and summery gold, the eyes a delicate powder blue. It's such a dramatic shift he can't believe Adam's even _related _to Dean, much less the hunter's abnormally tall brother.

"Adam?" Samuel Winchester's voice is rough, slurred by alcohol and sleep. "Faith, what the hell is going on?"

"Sam, I-" The human girl at his side shakes, her fingers wrapped tightly around Adam's; a force of habit that makes Adam's freshly resurrected soul tingle. It recalls giving chocolates and flowers to this girl, remembers nights and days and in-betweens where they kissed and fought and planned a future...

"Michael." Castiel says firmly. His little brother appears in the doorway, fingers closing warningly around Samuel's wrist, and there's something very lost and human in his eyes, beautiful even on Earth. "You've found a new vessel."

"Yes, but I'm afraid I left the other behind." Adam's voice is higher, sweeter than the roughened slide of Dean's voice; another change he's going to have to adjust to. "With Lucifer."

"_Dean,_" Sam whispers, his face stricken and bloodless. Michael can see the anxious flicker of Castiel's wings, hear the soft pop of an exploding lightbulb as his brother all but surges out of his vessel, screaming Dean's name in languages that burn Sam and Faith's ears. Castiel's Grace is laid bare in an instant, and Michael finds nothing of Heaven or the Host in it; he sees Dean Winchester at 6 years of age, 10, 18, 26, 30, sees the terrible explosion and heat that ended Dean's second life as both man and angel knew it. _You're in love with him, _Michael throws a neat twist of thought into Castiel, sees the lesser angel absorb it and turn his vessel's cheeks pink. _Brother, this is forbidden._

_I know. _But still Dean Winchester's name echoes in each throb of the borrowed heart.

_He is with Lucifer, Castiel. _He presses memories into Castiel, memories of twisting blades and rupturing flesh and blood flowing more freely than wine; the damned vessel's face, peeling and burnt and blistered beyond repair, the eyes as deep and cold and merciless as the Pit from whence the Devil came. _There is no hope for him now._

Castiel straightens, tethers himself to Jimmy Novak's body once more and speaks over Sam's soft whimpers of pain, the crunch of breaking glass.

"So long as I walk this earth, Michael, I will follow my orders." His brother's shoulders tighten as wings fold neatly back into them, the fabric of his vessel's coat knitting together over the slick black feathers and impressive span. "And my orders are to protect Dean Winchester, by whatever means necessary."

He reaches out and grasps Adam Milligan's shoulder, curling his fingers into unblemished flesh.

"Take me to him. _Now_."

* * *

It's safe to say she's got a pretty major guilt complex, and it's only getting larger when she sees the warehouse where Lucifer is keeping Dean; it's literally abandoned, sporting all the shattered windows and crude graffiti one comes to expect on a condemned building, and she thinks maybe she hears Dean screaming, bleeding, dying inside. She wonders if he's as cold as she is, or if Lucifer's got a great big ol' Hellfire in there, like some kind of Ninth Circle Satanic A.C.

"Castiel," she whispers, pounding her feet against the rough pavement. A low fog swirls whimsically around her ankles, as chilly and damp as north-western rain, and for the sixteenth time she wishes she'd never asked to ride shotgun on this 'mission' in the first place. "How are we getting in?"

"_We _can't," the angel says. "The building's covered in Enochian warding magic."

"So you're going to send Sam?"

"And hand Lucifer his vessel?" Castiel frowns. "No, Faith. Sam can't go in either."

"What the hell do you _mean _I can't go in?" The tall hunter limps over, his paralyzed leg scraping painfully over the ground. Michael watches him go with some interest, but it's in more of an Analyzing-Your-Weaknesses-So-I-Can-Smite-You way than in a concerned Angel of the Lord way. "Cas, my _brother's _in there."

"Precisely. Do you think your judgment will remain unimpaired? That the Devil doesn't already know we're here, that he's not waiting for you to go running after Dean?" Michael snorts through Adam's nose. "He'll take you and keep Dean, and he'll torture you both until you say yes."

A tight, throbbing silence spans between them, an unlikely blend of Heaven, Hell and Earth compacted into a space too small to fit towering Grace and blackened blood and jealous, mortal spirit. Sam's fingers shift towards the Glock he's got stuffed through his belt, worn and battered and blazing with some Winchester anti-demon additions, and she can tell he's thinking about running in; he might even hand himself over to Lucifer in exchange for Dean. Castiel's hands thrust themselves into the pockets of his trenchcoat, seamless and flawless as it must have been the day he took the vessel and its clothes, his eyes fixed on a rudely-drawn caricature, and she knows he's willing to die, to throw himself against the sigils until Dean walks free. Michael stretches lazily, looking for all the world like Adam after he'd finished a run, but his young-old gaze flickers expertly over barriers undetectable on the mortal plane and she can see he's hoping Lucifer will come out, come to the battle destiny had chosen for them. Faith touches her collarbone, feels the smooth thud of a heart that doesn't quite know who or what it wants anymore; Castiel, Adam, the salvation of Dean Winchester...

"It's my fault," she says. "I'm the one who jacked things up. I'll go in and get Dean."

"D'you think the Devil's not gonna have bodyguards?" Sam says derisively. He's got every reason to hate her now; she's the one who signed his brother's death warrant, and she can't quite bring herself to hate him back anymore. "Jesus Christ Faith, you can barely _shoot_."

"Give me your _girlfriend's _goddamn knife," Faith says. "And I won't have to."

In the end, it's Castiel who has to fish the knife out of Sam's jacket pocket and hand it to her, his face impassive; he must hate her as much as Sam does, now. The thought makes a small corner of her heart crumble and flake away, so many ashes in the whip of desert wind, and before she goes she leans forward and kisses him, just once. He doesn't quite know what to do with his mouth, and he's tense and tastes for all the world like a freshly minted penny, but Faith takes it because it's all she's ever going to get. Ever.

"I love you," she tells him. But this time, the first and last time, she doesn't really mean it.

**Warehouse**

_It's bigger on the inside!_

She remembers watching "Doctor Who" with her room-mate once and hearing the same punchline over and over again; she remembers thinking that it was impossible, improbable for a spaceship bigger than the Enterprise to be squeezed into a 1960's Police Box, and getting up and walking out after the first three episodes because she couldn't suspend her disbelief. Now maybe she thinks she understands what all those lost girls were talking about.

It's not so much the size of the warehouse- it's probably not much bigger than one floor of an office building, when all's said and done- but the _care _with which she has to go through it. Each shadowed, each rotting box and click of rodent nails could be a demon; hell, it could be the Devil himself. And all she's got is one demon-killing knife and roughly half a year of hunting experience. _Swell._

She slides through a shattered doorframe, very nearly tripping over a large chunk of cement and the remains of some unlucky clerk's writing desk; only sturdy shoes and good balance save her from an unpleasant fall, and Faith gasps out a _fuck _and turns to survey the space...

"Oh my God."

There's a man hanging from the ceiling, his chin tucked against his chest, toes a good six inches from the floor; blood streams silently over his flesh, and Faith thinks it'll be a miracle if the poor guy is alive at all. She slinks towards him, pressing the knife into her jacket pocket and surveying the damage. Her fingertips skim over the flesh of his arm, ripped and purpling with the muscle strained and knotted underneath; she exhales as her hand finds one of the iron cuffs around his wrist, takes his dead weight on her shoulder and feels his warm breath against her collar, assurance that there is life left in him yet. She closes her fingers around his wrist, finds the painfully simple catch of a cuff and opens it; elated, she fumbles for the next cuff and tries not to wrench his arm out of the socket in the process, digs one hand into the weeping flesh of his forearm and pulls sharply on the metal latch. He's free.

The man hisses like a deflating balloon and slowly lifts his head away from his chest, his neck popping and creaking; he's young, younger than Castiel's vessel and there's something familiar about the feminine shape of the lips and the line of the nose and recognition curls anxiously in the back of her head as his thick black eyelashes flutter away from the clearest green eyes Faith's ever seen.

"Oh Jesus," she gasps, and Dean Winchester's split mouth curls up into a mockery of a smile.

Then his whole body slumps forward, damp with sweat and blood and God knows what else and it's all she can do to keep them both upright, but somehow she manages. _Good, _she thinks, _We're going to make it. _Then she shifts, grips the crook of his elbow and too late feels the overripe squish of a drug addict's bruise. He gasps in pain.

"Well," someone says, and she can feel the weight of his presence crawling at the edges of her soul; Lucifer. "I expected Castiel, not you. Not this soon."

"_Please_," she whimpers, like a complete and total idiot. Like Satan cares whether or not she gets Dean home alive and in (mostly) one piece, to a place where Sam, Bobby, Ellen, Jo, and Castiel can treat him, love him.

"Hmm. Since you said please-" Silver flashes in the twilight and she only has time to marvel at the Colt's reappearance before it claps and blood mists over her clothes, the side of her face. Dean Winchester's breath rattles in his throat and he rolls out of her arms, forest-green eyes emptying and she can almost feel the velvet wings of his soul and the chill embrace of a Reaper a moment after the gunshot's echo fades. A slow, lazy stream of blood empties itself from the ragged gap in Dean's temple, sticky and warm against her boots.

She stands alone in an empty room and neither Lucifer, the Colt, nor the soul are ever to be seen there again.

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**_Te gusta? No te gusta? Review please! _**


	9. Chapter 9

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**Supernatural** and its associated characters belong to **Eric Kripke** (who should be reported for abuse and have his mind-children turned over to me!)

_Author's Note_: **My little space markers STILL aren't working, but I've found a solution.**

**This is one of my favorite chapters...there should be a few after it; it's not yet the end! **

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**Impala**

Sam's driving. No one else offers to, and he wouldn't want them to; just like last time, the Impala is sole property of the last and youngest Winchester. _His _music will pound out of the speakers now, _his _coffee cup will rest on that awkward little bump between passenger and driver and slosh stickily onto whoever has the misfortune of sitting next to him at ass'o'clock in the morning. Michael's occupying the hot seat at the moment, twisting his fingers together and muttering something in Enochian; Sam hopes for his sake that it can be translated into "God, bring Dean Winchester back _now,_" or so help him, he's pulling over and buying a Winchester-sized cup of coffee.

Castiel's sitting very quietly in the back, scrubbing a Wet One over the bridge of Dean's nose, which had to have been broken and rebroken a thousand times for it to look the way it does. He stops once, spreading slick fingers over the plane of Dean's chest and burning Enochian into the ribs; the thick smell of burned meat lingers. He prays continuously under his breath, a rich bass hum that weaves itself into the soundtrack of the open road- rushing wind, scrape of wheels, purr of engine- and the road twists and blurs before Sam's eyes for a while after that. He wonders if God's laughing at him, wherever he is, or if Chuck's tossing back endless bottles of hard liquor and settling in with Mistress Whats-Her-Name as the protagonist of the piece lies dead in the back of his '67 Chevy; he wonders if everyone but him and Cas saw it ending this way, with Dean's brain scrambled by a bullet, his body beaten and broken beyond recognition, his soul in the hands of the angels he'd always hated.

"Please explain why we left Faith behind," Michael says, when they're almost in Sioux Falls but still not far enough away from the _damned _warehouse, never far enough away.

"She wouldn't have fit," Sam replies. "One of you would've had to fly to Bobby's, and I think I'd rather ease-"

But the truth is nothing's going to ease Bobby into this; not explanations, not gentle proddings, and definitely not an Archangel who'd left his meatsuit (who, by the way, might as well be Bobby's _son_) in the hands of the Devil. Sam stops talking. It's all a lie anyway.

"She was not welcome with us any longer," Castiel says softly. Adam Milligan blinks at him, and Sam can see he's surprised to hear the truth fall so bitterly from another angel's lips.

"_Brother_-"

"You can go after her if you want," The lesser angel's voice is hard, unforgiving. "But I never want to see her face again."

The rest of the drive is painfully, awkwardly silent; Dean's boot knocks against the door whenever the Impala turns a corner, and he'll have nightmares about the sound for years afterward.

**Sioux Falls, South Dakota: **

Bobby doesn't open the door for them.

He's not entirely sure why, but he's got a slick, aching feeling in the center of his chest that refuses to go away; in intensifies now, when the _scrape-thud _of Sam's unsteady gait echoes hollowly through the house. The youngest of the Winchesters slides into Bobby's line of sight a moment later, his hands and shirt smeared with something thick and dark and Bobby remembers sitting in an empty house watching Dean try to repair the rip in Sam's spine, his face spattered with dead man's blood. It's got the same color, the same texture, and the aching place in Bobby's chest expands.

"Where's Dean?" he asks. "Faith called and said-"

Castiel appears behind Sam, cradling something against his chest that might have been human, might have been Dean Winchester straight from Hell, the one they never got to meet but sometimes dreamed about. Shredded and broken and twisted into a nightmare, his eyes sticky and black and without pity, his fingers more accustomed to curling around a razor-blade than they were to holding his little brother's hand, guiding a frightened woman to safety; but it was so beyond reach, so unimaginable... and now it was in Bobby's living room.

"The couch," he says. The ugly fabric makes improper funeral hangings for a man who saved the world, the miscellaneous rips and stains poor decoration for the closest thing Robert Singer ever had to a son, but it's all he's got and all Dean would ever have wanted. Castiel gently relinquishes his hold on the corpse, neatly setting it down and arranging its boneless arms and legs, folding the former against the hamburger meat of Dean's chest and straightening the latter; shattered bone grind and scrapes, but eventually it looks almost natural. Like Hell!Dean is sleeping on Bobby's couch.

"How-"

Dean's angel, his personal saviour and the closest thing he ever had to a best friend, turns knowingly towards Sam. His soft white fingers touch the bruised and bloodied span of Dean Winchester's forehead, showcasing the ragged twist of bone at the temple; the exit Dean's soul took when it left his body.

"Lucifer shot him," Sam's voice cracks. "With the _Colt_."

The gun the Winchesters had been searching for all their lives, the one they'd found and traded and lost again... Bobby always knew the damn thing would bring them nothing but bad luck. But they'd never listened, and now there was only one Winchester left; one out of three, a pathetic 33.33 percent that enjoyed sucking blood and exorcising demons with his mind.

"Robert Singer." An unfamiliar young man is standing next to Bobby when he finally looks up, and there's something of John around the face, an unidentifiable shift towards the Winchester that takes Bobby by surprise. He blinks at him, the fair, slender boy in his living room, and it takes him a moment but he finally sees the twist of an angel in his powder-blue eyes. "My name is Michael. Dean Winchester served me well-"

Sam jerks the Archangel back before Bobby has a chance to do his vessel any serious harm.

"YOU SON OF A BITCH!" he screams, and he can taste copper at the back of his throat. Michael looks nonplussed, maybe even vaguely amused as Bobby lurches forward as far as he can without falling out of the wheelchair and tries to grasp some part of the angel that had used up-_wasted_- a perfectly good life. "BRING HIM BACK! BRING HIM BACK _NOW_!"

"He is in Paradise, Robert. Even if I wished to, I'm certain he would refuse to return to..." The Archangel looks distastefully around the room, with its scattered bottles and tattered books and leaflets from the Protestant Church in town. "_This_."

Bobby pitches onto the floor; Castiel carefully lifts him up, then says,

"Brother, this is Dean's Paradise. He has no other."

"You're biased, Castiel." Michael's voice is stiff, cold.

"I created him from _nothing_," Castiel replies. "You think I don't know-"

"Carnality is forbidden; don't you remember the Grigori?"

"This is _not _about-"

"Damn it, Michael!" Sam intervenes, pushing Bobby's shoulders into the canvas seat. "We're asking you for a favor."

The Archangel frowns.

"Samuel Winchester," he says. "What you're asking is more than a _favor_."

"We'll do anything. Whatever it takes, just...bring him back." The last and youngest Winchester's voice breaks, and Bobby knows without having to turn that he's looking at Dean's corpse, shattered and inhuman. "Please."

Michael's frown deepens, and for the second time Bobby wonders who his vessel is; the large shoulders, the slight turn of the nose; they're Winchester traits, but as far as he knows John didn't have any 'other' kids. He was always so careful, worried about soiling the boys' memories of his and Mary's marriage, weakening their family... the Archangel sighs and his features smooth out, cold and detached.

"Shut your eyes."

Bobby feels the space in front of him explode in a whirlwind of fire and blood and Grace, hears the high-pitched grate of angelic speech and the deafening pound of wings and a long, drawn-out scream that scrapes at his soul- _Nonono, PleaseGodno- a_nd he topples. Neither Sam nor Castiel catch him and he lands hard near the epicenter, feels something like red-hot iron and silk driving itself into his skin and realizes it's Michael; he cries out in horror because it's burning him alive, biting at his face and hands and he wonders if Dean felt this way when he was being passed into Heaven.

And then there's nothing.

* * *

Castiel watches Michael reach out, accept the quivering pulse of human soul from Zachariah and remembers when he first cupped Dean in the palm of his hand. Remembers the gentle shudder of that bright, beautiful spirit and the immediate jolt of emotion he'd experienced when he was told to rebuild its body; he had flown through time and space looking for things to give Dean. Skin as smooth as it had been when he was eight years old, a virginity he hadn't possessed since 9th grade, the eyes from the hour before he'd been dragged to Hell, the smile as slick and easy as it had been since he turned 17... he'd kissed it goodbye in the way angels did as he lowered it into the pine box and prayed it would serve its purpose. Maybe that was the moment he loved Dean; maybe it was one of the hundreds of others, the sideways glances, the casual gift of a name.

_"Brother,"_ Michael's voice makes Sam cry out in pain, flings Bobby from his chair. "_You understand that I can't make him as he was before_."

_"You mean he'll be scarred."_

_"Will this hinder their ability to love him?" _Michael asks. _"Would Dean Winchester truly be better off in Paradise?"_

Castiel looks squarely at Dean's ruined corpse, with the crude, bloodied etchings and the gaping holes; he's never had worse than this. A beating of this magnitude is unprecedented, even for a Winchester.

_"No."_

_"Then here," _Michael pours the little soul into Castiel's bright hands, his angel hands. _"You have the honor, Castiel." _His lips twist in a wry smile; something he learned from Dean. _"Again."_

He relishes the merry, uncomprehending bob and weave of Dean's spirit, the inconquerable rush of humanity; it was his favorite part of bringing Dean back, the brief, simple union of angel and soul. He kneels beside the sofa (the carpet curls back, black and stinking) and gently, gently passes his fingers through Dean's chest. After a breath of hesitation, a still beat where he's not sure Dean is going to return to his body, the soul quivers in his grasp and slots perfectly into place; the reaction is immediate.

Dean's back arches and his toes curl into the flat cushions, fingers biting into the sensitive flesh of his palms; Michael and Zachariah press him down, hands singing the sofa and the ugly red slash of blades and thick darkness of bullets and puncture wounds seal, a delicate pink cross-hatch against the skin. Dean screams and his eyes are open and they're watering, and Castiel gently covers them with the palm of his human hand.

"Hush," he says. "Be still, Dean."

_"CAS!" _Dean's mouth doesn't move when he speaks; it's a cry of the soul more than a cry of the body. _"IT HURTS!"_

_"_Shhh..." He kisses the starburst scar on Dean's temple, and this time he doesn't pray for Dean to be a willing vessel, a righteous man. This time he prays for Dean to live, love, and fight as he chooses; this time he prays for free will.

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**_Te gusta? No te gusta? Review please! _**


	10. Chapter 10

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**Supernatural** and its associated characters belong to **Eric Kripke** (who should be reported for abuse and have his mind-children turned over to me!)

Author's Note: **My little space markers STILL aren't working, but I've found a solution.**

**WARNING: For Dean/Lisa shippers like _TertiaryRaiths_, the amount of fluffy Dean/Cas I'm trying to inject into this chapter could prove fatal. Turn back now!**

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**Sioux Falls, South Dakota**

Dean's body is limp beneath Michael's hands, familiar and battered as the roadmap Sam keeps in the Impala's glove compartment, just in case Dean ever starts to lose his innate sense of direction. His face is slack, a snail trail of drool glistening at the corner of his mouth, a mouth Michael used to give orders with, speak with, scream with once upon a time; Castiel strokes the cheekbone and looks accusingly at his older brother.

"You hurt him," he says.

"A necessary evil, Castiel," Michael replies. "And as I recall, you've given Dean a fair share of pain as well."

The Archangel crouches beside the sofa, feels rather than sees Zachariah watching the exchange, certain to report it when he goes to receive revelation. Michael is his commander-in-chief, his general... sharing his actions with the rest of the Host won't seem like a violation in Zachariah's eyes. Six months ago, it wouldn't have seemed that way to Michael, still Heaven-fresh and righteous inside Dean Winchester's skin; it does now, when Castiel presses trembling lips against the scar on Dean's temple and touches the place where his heart pounds against the ribs. _Hush, little one,_ he whispers in the language of angels. _You are safe._

"Cas," Dean groans.

"Brother. Sam and Bobby will wake up momentarily," Zachariah says. As though they've heard him, the two humans sprawled awkwardly across the floor and furniture shift, begin to murmur half-remembered things from their dreams. _Not the cheese! You know I hate Fergie._ "We should go."

But Adam's body -_Michael's _body- remembers Faith, screams for the dark-haired girl Castiel and Sam were so willing to leave behind and he knows he can't linger on Earth any longer. He would go to the girl, he would stay near Dean, his favorite vessel, so stubborn and powerful and loved and Lucifer would be forgotten, or taken on in the way the Winchesters know; with knives and guns and John Winchester's 'go down swinging' mentality. And he can't afford to do that, not when so much is at stake. Not when he's finally realized they were wrong.

"Home, Zachariah," Michael says. "We're going to go home."

Castiel looks up at them and Michael sees the glitter of undisguised longing in his eyes, the desire for Heaven almost as powerful as his desire for humanity. He grasps Dean's crooked fingers, squeezes them in the palm of his graceful, narrow hand and says, "Goodbye." Michael's not entirely sure who he's speaking to, if Robert Singer's house is going to be entirely devoid of angels before Sam or Dean or Robert fully regain consciousness or if Castiel is merely wishing them well.

"Are you coming, little brother?" he asks, ignoring Zachariah's faint, derisive snort.

"No." Castiel blinks placidly, and Michael is again struck by the beauty of his vessel. It's so small, so delicate, pale and soft as a strip of white silk; the polar opposite of Dean, strong and colorful and rough as sandpaper, familiar with the ways of women and beer. The voice in Michael's head, the ache in his bones, the closest he's come to the human experience of brotherhood.

"We should go," Zachariah says firmly.

"Alright," Michael folds out his wings, feels the stretch and burn of them in Adam's shoulders. He half expects Castiel to reach for him, to grasp his arm and snap out the great black wings Michael used to see on the battlefield, the ones Anael used to pet and groom when she and Castiel were on assignments together. He half expects to see his young brother standing in front of them in Heaven, with no need for vessels and no love for Dean Winchester.

He is, as in many things, sorely disappointed.

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There is something unusually vulnerable about Dean when he's naked, a small tilt or curve that betrays his insecurities and provides an explanation for his one-night approach to relationships. It's painfully ovious when Castiel strips away ruined clothes and finds a network of scars, things Heaven and Hell burned into his flesh, things Dean tries to cover with trembling hands and a skeletal smile. They're harsh and defined and cruel and they twist his skin into something hideous and terrible, and Dean is all the lovelier in spite of them.

"In." The angel places a hand on Dean's back and gently applies force; the smooth span of muscle shifts, highlighting an intricate Devil's Trap, the inscription on the Colt, a cut that would have severed the spinal cord and Dean grunts uncomfortably when Castiel touches them. There are so many...

Dean steps into the shower and jimmies the faucet until water curls out of the metal appliance, steaming and sliding over scarred flesh and Castiel wants very badly to join him under the hot spray and kiss each mark, tell Dean that they make him beautiful. That he's precious, and loved, and Castiel will never stop thanking God for giving him back. But he doesn't. Instead he lifts the threadbare washcloth Sam left in the bathroom and scrapes a slick bar of soap over it, noting the exhausted slump of broad shoulders, the hungry grumble of an empty stomach, the humiliated flush of stubbled cheeks. He passes the rag over each and leaves a trail of white suds behind, a pale road coiling around Dean's legs and belly and back and ending in the smooth place behind his ear. The drain is choking on dirt and old blood when Castiel decides Dean is clean and shuts the water off.

"You finished?" Bobby asks through the door, and for the first time in months his voice isn't slurred and roughened by alcohol. "I got clothes here-"

"Thank you. Just toss them in." Castiel guides Dean out of the tub and hands him a towel; Bobby flings a thin, faded sweater, Batman boxers, and a pair of ripped jeans through the half-open door and squeaks away. He can smell meat cooking, a warm, mouth-watering cologne that overpowers the almost-minty scent of Irish Green and Nivea for Men, and this encourages him to help Dean with his clothes; the quicker he's clean and combed and dressed, the quicker they can feed him.

Dean's skin is hot and damp and freshly scrubbed under the angel's fingers, and he covers each millimetere with care and precision, his breath pooling behind Dean's ears.

"Done." He steps back and lets Dean zip and button the jeans, silently assessing. His clothes fit him differently now, clinging and hanging at slightly skewed angles and he's thinner and the scars are outlined, emphasized by the shirt's color. Castiel wants to take away the clothing, reminders of what Dean was and will be but isn't just yet, to kiss and touch and worship until the man sees himself as something worthwhile...

"Cas?" The hunter is flushed and there's a dark, closed quality to his eyes that wasn't there before, but the soul still shines brightly behind them; he can feel it, and he can feel the rough slide of Dean's cheek and the sweet place under his jaw and the pounding hollow between his collarbones. He can feel...his fingers slip over scarred, barren flesh and the absence of his mark is a shrill scream in his Grace, shattering the liquid warmth between himself and Dean.

"Dean, what-"

"It's gone," Dean says roughly, and he quickly exits into the corridor, leaving Castiel alone in a puddle of water and heartache.

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**Three weeks later...**

He's ugly.

He sees in the way Bobby looks at him, light and wary as a civilian wearing Eau de Wildebeest in a crocodile pen. He hears it in Sam's voice, a thick undercurrent of regret that brings Cheetos wrapped in Christmas paper and F's on report cards to mind. He feels it in the heat of Castiel's hands, reluctant and uncertain, a star bound to Dean by pity and necessity. He tastes it in food served by trembling waitresses, drinks poured by concerned bartenders, people who would have killed to spend the night with him six months ago. He smells it in the thick steam of the shower, curling over the mirror and blurring his features in the glass, the illusion of good looks and smooth skin wiped away by an open hand. Everywhere he goes, there's some reminder of everything the war has taken from him; he ought to have seen it before.

Thick scars curl and split on his arms and legs, forming pieces of Latin phrases and Enochian sigils and Devil's Traps on his chest and neck and back; the worst of them are easily accessable, felt beneath a sleeve or seen under a shirt riding up his back or stomach. The few girls he's tried to pick up since he was resurrected ask about them, their alcohol-glazed eyes sharp with concern and fear until they eventually decide to try their luck with someone less dangerous, whose leather jacket and ripped jeans were bought at Macy's and whose motorcycles were donations from indulgent parents.

So Dean's decided he's not going to go into town anymore. He's going to narrow his world down to Singer Salvage and the half-repaired Honda Accord that's been sitting in the lot since he was 26 years old; cars are familiar, warm, unjudging. He spends all the time he can with them, taking them apart piece by piece and fitting them back together. Sometimes Cas sits and watches, trenchcoat fanning out around his neatly crossed legs, sweat sticking the soft black fan of his hair against his forehead and he'll wait until Dean scoots out from under the car before he goes in, even if it's a hundred degrees out or it's pouring down rain. Sometimes Bobby will roll out with a word of advice, a box of tools, but his visits are brief and unmemorable. Sam comes out almost as often as Cas, usually bearing beer and a 'let's talk about your time away' face, and Dean will sit and tell him what it was like to fly, how it felt to kill demons with his fucking mindand Sam always looks a little disappointed, because this is Dean telling him the good parts about being possessed and completely avoiding anything to do with Lucifer's Torture-Fest 2010, but he keeps his mouth shut and doesn't push his very limited luck.

"Hey!" Bobby's voice echoes through the rust forest, startling a white and grey cat that Dean had decided to call Frank away from his perch on the hood of a dilapidated Charger. "Dinner!"

"ALRIGHT!" Dean shouts. He slides out from under a heap of something that might once have been a Volkswagen but probably won't be again, collects his tools and heads for the house...

"Dean." Electricity spikes through the air and shudders over Dean's skin, slick and bitter with sweat. "Dean, we need to talk."

"Jesus! Cas, can't we talk in the house?"

The angel frowns.

"No."

"Why the hell not?" Dean tries to push past Castiel, knowing full well that he won't be able to. What he doesn't know is that Castiel is going to lean in and kiss him, an awkward first-date teenage affair that makes Dean's brain dribble out his ears and forces his fist into Castiel's jaw. The knuckles shatter but he doesn't register the break for a moment, not until pain blossoms in his hand and his eyes start watering.

"What the hell?"

He asks his question of the empty air; Castiel is gone.

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Sam first notices things aren't exactly kosher between his older brother and Castiel when they're out shopping for their traditional Christmas shrimp. They're standing in the middle of the grocery aisle, pretty much taking up all the space and a little old lady's looking at the boxed tilapia like maybe she wants them to get it for her if they're not going to move, and Dean's trying to call Castiel and ask him if he's allergic to shellfish.

"Little feathered bastard won't pick up his phone," he grumbles. "Sure, he'll answer when ya wanna know where the latest demon convention's goin' down, but when you need to ask him about dinner..."

"Let's just assume he has no allergies," Sam says.

"Yeah, and when he puffs up like a balloon and needs one of those emergency tracheo-whatsits, you get to stick the pen in his throat."

The little old lady sighs in a resigned sort of way and starts to turn her cart, accepting the fact that she's not going to be able to purchase her microwaveable fish tonight. Sam honestly thinks they're doing her a favor- someone her age should try to stay away from frozen, pre-processed food- but it still doesn't change the fact that Dean is angry about _nothing_. He tries to take the phone out of Dean's hand, but unfortunately it happens to be the one he says he broke on a Volkswagen and Dean swears so loudly the little old lady starts hyperventilating and fumbling for her Jitterbug.

"What is your _problem_?" Sam asks, steering Dean out of the frozen food aisle and hopefully postponing senior heart failure. "It's just shrimp."

"It's not just shrimp! Cas is unreliable-"

"Bull."

"Fine. You guys are such BFFs; _you _call him." Dean scowls and stomps towards the ice cream sample man, who's looking rather anxiously down the aisle they just exited.

Cas picks up on the first ring.

"Yes?" His voice is calm, friendly.

"Uh...are you allergic to shellfish?" Sam asks, feeling rather stupid. The ice cream man makes a face at Dean, pale and scarred in an AC-DC shirt and ripped jeans, and even from a distance Sam hears him say, _Get out, we don't want any trouble._

_Trouble? What the hell kind of customer service is that? _

"No."

_I said out, young man. I'll call the police._

_I'm just here to buy some ice cream. _Dean's smile is tight, ersatz.

"Hey, Cas. Could you swing by-"

The angel materializes with a crackle of static, the phone still pressed tightly against his ear; the ice cream sample man notices his sudden appearance and blinks worriedly.

_Beat it, kid. Take your weird little friends and-_

Dean's undamaged fist slams into the ice cream sample man's eye and he screams in pain and outrage, his red apron riding up over his Santa belly as he scrabbles around the slick tile floor. Dean flips the fold-out table over, spilling tiny plastic cups of ice cream that melt and merge into ugly brown puddles and he looks like he's ready to have another go at the rude sample man.

"DEAN!" Castiel shouts.

He's at Dean's side in an instant, pressing two fingers against his forehead; the eldest Winchester sags like a marionette with the strings cut, folding clumsily against Castiel's chest. His boots slip-slide in the mess of ice cream and cheap plastic tablecloth, and for a moment Sam's standing outside a warehouse in the middle of nowhere watching Faith drag Dean's lifeless body across the ground.

"I should press charges!" Sample Man bawls.

"You son of a bitch." Castiel very nearly drops Dean as he lurches towards the Sample Man, eyes blazing in a way that makes Sam think about all the times he'd shredded ghosts just by standing in the same room with them. "Do you have any idea who this is?"

"He's _nobody,_" Sample Man says coldly. He's laid out on the floor a second later, eyes rolled up into the back of his skull and Castiel looks at Dean's still, sleeping face and touches the cheek with trembling fingers.

_You're everything, _he whispers.

And although Sam likes to think he knew it way before either of them did, that's when he realizes Castiel is headover heels, almost-as-crazy-as-Faith in love with his brother.

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**Ah, the fluff-bunnies make fools of us all...**

**Te gusta? No te gusta? Review please! **


	11. Chapter 11

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**Supernatural** and its associated characters belong to **Eric Kripke** (who should be reported for abuse and have his mind-children turned over to me!)

Author's Note: **My little space markers STILL aren't working, but I've found a solution.**

**WARNING: There's Dean/Cas. Real Dean/Cas. Also, I was in a strange place when I wrote this, so it's a little trippy. **

**AND WHO CAN BELIEVE THE BADASSNESS OF CAS THIS SEASON? Not me, that's for DARN sure! I mean...damn. He's just...damn. **

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**Sioux Falls, South Dakota**

Dean wakes up in the panic room.

For a moment he thinks he's back in his grave, the one Castiel let him crawl out of alone, with dirt and blood jammed under his fingernails and skin that felt too fresh, too sensitive. He realizes his mistake quickly enough; light pours in through that pentacle-fan grille Bobby installed and _damn _they need to get that guy a girlfriend. Preferably of the hunter persuasion...maybe Ellen? He'd always thought they liked each other, in that strange old-person way that was more like schoolyard dating than any sort of grown-up 'let's have sex and get married and buy a Golden Retriever' thing. And they're pretty much his parents anyway...

"Dean," Sam's voice echoes in the circular room, and it's the wrong acoustics for a pine box six feet under, so he's decidedly, one hundred percent, not in his grave then. Good to know. "How are you feeling?"

Dean thinks about saying, "Dead, thanks. And you?" But he doesn't, because that would make Sam unhappy.

"Did we get the shrimp?" he asks, and it's not as witty as what he was planning on saying but it doesn't make Sam cry either.

"Bobby did." Sam shuffles into view; Dean realizes he's flat on his back, on that uncomfortable cot he and Bobby had to strap Sam to when he was all hyped up on Vitamin Bitch. He's just glad they didn't handcuff him, or put the damn thing inside the Devil's trap on steroids. "We're officially kicked out of the Wal-Mart."

"Cheap Wal-Mart _knockoff_," Dean grumbles, but he feels a little bit guilty because he knows Sam likes the bargain electronics. Just because Dean's never leaving Bobby's house again doesn't mean he has to get his _and _Sam's faces pasted on Wanted posters outside every store within a hundred mile radius. "Sorry, man."

"That guy was an asshat." And seriously, _asshat_? They're not teenage girls...or gay teenage boys, for that matter, even if Dean was always a little iffy as to what exactly Sam and Howard Brennen were doing locked up in the bedroom for hours on end. "He got what he deserved."

"His Rocky Road all over the floor? I think that's more of a janitorial-"

"Cas kicked his ass for you." Sam says, and there's something in his voice that makes Dean blink. He sits up and gets a pounding headache and one of the scars pulls weirdly on the skin of his back, but he manages to do it, looks Sam squarely in the face (the guy's sitting down for once). There's a little smile at the corner of Sam's mouth, a twinkle in his eyes that Dean only sees when he's got his hand super-glued to a beer bottle or when the hot sci-fi slave girl he's chasing down the streets of San Diego turns out to be a guy named Roger dressed _up _as a sci-fi slave girl.

"Remind me never to piss off the nerd angels," he says, testing the waters. Sam full out grins.

"Man, the nerd angels _love _you."

Dean's running that through his Older Brother ScanTron when Castiel shows up, popping into the panic room he was certain they'd angel-proofed after their first disastrous meeting. His hair is ruffled, more unkempt than usual and Dean thinks he might even look a little dirty, possibly like he spent the night on a park bench in New York. The soft blue eyes Dean's always thought were pretty in his own heterosexual way are streaked with red lightning, pained and focused intently on Dean's face (he hasn't shaved in two nights, so it's probably looking a little rough too).

"Sam, could you-"

"_Going_." Sam winks at Dean; Dean's still a little out of it; he can't quite grasp the point of the wink. He just props himself up against the wall, which _feels _like it's got salt and iron shavings mixed up in it. He's still mildly irritated with Castiel at this point, but has personally and privately reconciled with him now the angel's beat up a store employee. _Check that off the guy's bucket list._

"Hit it," Dean says. "I'm listening."

Castiel nods and sits on the edge of the cot, close enough that Dean can see him trembling but far enough away that they're managing to not touch. At all. In a not-even-the-hem-of-his-trenchcoat-is-within accidental-touching distance kind of close-far way. It is at this moment, still suspended between the belief that he's just crawled out of his coffin all hypersensitive and weak and the reality of sitting in Bobby's panic room against his very uncomfortable wall, that Dean realizes he'd rather like to be kissing Castiel. Or smelling him.

"Dean." Castiel's using his 'Heaven hath a mission for thee, insignificant mortal' voice, which doesn't bode very well for Dean's hope that they'll be kissing (or smelling) each other by the end of this conversation and _damn, _he's never letting Castiel mind whammy him again. It puts him in a weird headspace; he might as well smoke pot. Pot might even be _healthier_, for Christ's sake. "Dean Winchester."

"Cas." He's thinking about leaning in and kissing him just to wipe away that awkward, Dear God Don't Reject my Romantic Advances Miss Elizabeth Bennett look. And also, does Sam still have that bootleg copy of 'Pride and Prejudice' in his duffel? Castiel smiles faintly, and for the first time Dean wonders if he can hear his thoughts. Wouldn't that be awkward.

"I can," Castiel says, answering Dean's unpunctuated question to his inner consciousness, and before Dean can blink or say something like _Your _mom _can, _Castiel swoops in and kisses him. He's taken lessons since the first time, because he's not so much pushing the lower half of his face against Dean's face; he's actually kissing him, in a man on angel, Rose to your Jack (with Dean playing the part of Jack, thank you very much) kind of way. For a moment the only sound in the room is Dean and Castiel's nose-breathing, the slick separation of their mouths when they shift and part and find out how to not bump their noses or bite each other.

"Huh," Dean says and he leans forward and gives Castiel a nice solid sniff, just because he can; the angel smells like chocolate and snow and something deliciously botanical, and he thinks they should make a perfume for men that smells like Castiel. _Castiel for Men; will most definitely increase your ability to mate. _

"You're beautiful," Castiel says firmly, placing the pads of his fingers against the side of Dean's neck. There's a wide, jagged scar there where Lucifer cut his throat, and Dean faintly remembers being trapped in the back of his head while Michael tried to scream and all the air fizzled and slipped away before it reached his mouth... he recoils. Cas shouldn't be touching him. _Nobody _should be touching him. What the hell had he been thinking?

"Stop that." The fingers on Dean's neck skate up into his hair, which is thicker and longer than it's been since Dean was a kid, enabling Castiel to get a firm grip and hold him in place. He squirms, suddenly made uncomfortable by Castiel's proximity and power and dear _God _where's Interrupting Sam when he needs him? Trying to scoot away from an Angel of the Lord is like trying to swim a mile with a twenty pound anchor tied to his ankle; it's impossible, can't be done.

"Cas-"

"I don't care about the scars," Castiel says. "You had them before you went to Hell and you never wanted for-"

"I wasn't _this _fucked up."

The angel frowns, frees one of his hands from Dean's hair and places it on his shoulder, over the wide swath of scar tissue that had once been Castiel's handprint; Dean wonders if it hurts him, the absence of the brand. He wonders if Lucifer knew.

"You are still mine." Castiel's voice is soft and low, the faraway rumble of a freight train winding up scrubby mountains, raising goosebumps on Dean's skin. "No matter what you've done, or what has been done to you."

"_Christ_," Dean says. "Way to lay it on thick."

Castiel blinks patiently at him and doesn't go on talking, doesn't spout any more earth-shattering lines about owning Dean; still, the words are almost preferable to the rigid, electric silence after them. Dean wonders if he should say something clever, something that puts a decisive end to whatever it is Castiel thinks he's going to get here (which is nothing). He wonders if he should pretend to fall asleep like he used to when he and Sam were fighting in the back of the car and Dad threatened them with an ass-kicking. It used to drive the poor kid nuts; he always ended up with a foot-shaped bruise on his scrawny behind because he'd been screaming at his abnormally passive older brother. _I know you're awake! Faker! _

_"_I'm not Sam," Castiel says.

He tips forward, officially violating Dean's space, which Dean wouldn't usually mind because Castiel's a social retard and things like personal bubbles don't mean much to him, but suffice it to say he does now Castiel's decided to develop a big gay man-crush on him. _Damn it _why does he have to smell so nice? It's gotta be some sort of angelic perk... the corner of Castiel's mouth twitches and Dean, offended, thinks maybe he's laughing at him. Hahaha, Dean and his crippling homophobia/self-esteem issues. _Laugh it up, Wingnut. See if you get one piece of this sweet ass now._

_"_Why are you making this so difficult?" Castiel breathes into the soft, vulnerable space between the hunter's neck and his shoulder, the faded khaki of his trenchcoat almost completely obscuring Dean's vision and Dean remembers the odd moment when he existed in two places at once. He'd been able to see his body stretched across the sofa, bloody and beaten all to hell, but at the same time he'd seen Castiel, holding Dean's soul in the palm of what passed for a hand; angels aren't what he thought they would be, all razor edges and swirls like the inside of a celestial lava lamp instead of white robes and Birkenstocks. He could see Castiel's eyes, still the same shade of indescribable blue, and the thin, soft filaments of his wings, the strange beat-twist of something that might have been his heart, but everything else had been up for interpretation. This feels the same way; like Castiel's standing in the panic room, vessel-free and exposed with his wings taking up all the space and he's holding Dean's soul between Heaven and Earth.

"I'm not," Dean says softly. "I don't mean to."

_Hush, little one. You are safe._

"I know," Castiel replies; he kisses Dean's cheek, the ridge of bone beneath his eye, and he thinks maybe that could be enough. A nice, warm angel sitting in the passenger seat, Sam's legs jammed up in the back and the computer screen glowing as he flips through endless Word documents on exorcisms and lamias and God knows what else. Bobby only a phone call or a long drive away, Ellen and Jo on speed-dial...

"It's perfect," Castiel says.

"Really? I thought it was _heavenly_."

His quip earns him a still, irritated pause.

"Even I know that was a bad joke."

_Dean Winchester...this is your life._

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**I'm not quite sure if this is the end or not...a shoutout to all my dedicated readers/reviewers! I love you all. Thanks for sticking with it! :)**

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